Leaked ABC Memo Advertiser blackout of AAR

[Red Knight]

Apparently these advertisers do not want to be aired during Air America Programming.

http://www.fair.org/images/ABCmemo.pdf

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2983


Air America on Ad Blacklist?
ABC document: Sponsors shun liberal network

10/31/06

An internal memo from ABC Radio Networks to its affiliates reveals scores of powerful sponsors have a standing order that their commercials never be placed on syndicated Air America programming that airs on ABC affiliates.

The October 25 memo was provided to FAIR by the Peter B. Collins Show, a syndicated radio show originating on the West Coast.

Headlined "Air America Blackout" and addressed "Dear Traffic Director"—referring to the radio station staffer who coordinates programming and advertising—the memo gives the following order to affiliates:


Please be advised that Hewlett Packard has purchased schedules with ABC Radio Networks between October 30th and December 24th, 2006. Please make sure you blackout this advertiser on your station, as they do not wish it to air on any Air America affiliate.


The directive then advises ABC Radio Network affiliates to take note of a list of other sponsors who do not want their programming to run during Air America programming.


Please see below for a complete list of all advertisers requesting that NONE of their commercials air within Air America programming.


The list, totaling 90 advertisers, includes some of largest and most well-known corporations advertising in the U.S.: Wal-Mart, GE, Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Bank of America, Fed-Ex, Visa, Allstate, McDonald's, Sony and Johnson & Johnson. The U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Navy are also listed as advertisers who don't want their commercials to air on Air America.

The ABC memo is evidence of the potentially censorious effect that advertisers' political preferences can have on the range of views presented in the media. When Al Gore proposed launching a progressive TV network, a Fox News executive told Advertising Age (10/13/03): "The problem with being associated as liberal is that they wouldn't be going in a direction that advertisers are really interested in.... If you go out and say that you are a liberal network, you are cutting your potential audience, and certainly your potential advertising pool, right off the bat." (See Extra!, 11-12/03.)

FAIR's call to the ABC contact person listed on the memo, to ask if similar "blackout" lists exist for other shows, including conservative-leaning programs, has not been returned.

[Red Knight]

1. More on this

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/air-americas-abc-blackli_b_33123.html

Air America's ABC Blacklist: The Real Story (46 comments )
READ MORE: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Karl Rove, George W. Bush
This week we learned that some 90 major corporations demanded that their ads be pulled from radio stations that run Air America programming, demonstrating the fundamental challenge facing everyone working to promote critical journalism and a vibrant free press.

First off, let's clarify why this is taking place: The crime isn't that Air America is partisan.

All or most of these firms advertise on politically conservative talk radio programs and/or stations. And the crime isn't even being "liberal." Some of these advertisers have moderate or liberal executives who donate to Democratic candidates and are far from rabid conservatives.

So what is the problem? While "liberal" Air America clearly favors big D Democrats, unlike virtually all other programming on commercial radio and television, it gives airtime to reports that are critical of corporations and the powerful politicians they keep in Washington.

This is the heart of the problem: Air America commits a crime called journalism. Almost none of the so-called conservative radio shows or networks do any semblance of actual reporting. They merely pontificate -- repeating talking points that seem to be emailed straight from Karl Rove's laptop.

Air America does its share of pontificating as well, and we leave it to others to compare its integrity to that of Limbaugh and Hannity. But we can say that Air America journalism occasionally focuses on corporate malfeasance. It examines closely the deeply corrupt relationship between corporate power and government officials.

This brand of journalism is found almost nowhere else on the commercial dial. It is brandished as "liberal" because it does not practice journalism as stenography to those in power. This is the same reason that Bill Moyers doesn't have any of these 90 firms lining up to underwrite his PBS reporting.

So what should we learn from this episode?

1) Commercial media are highly concentrated and corporate advertisers have massive budgets, giving their programming decisions profound implications. According to its own Web site, ABC Radio has more than 4,400 affiliate radio stations reaching nearly 105 million people nationwide. Monopoly media power translates into significant political power and that is dangerous. This is a big deal.

2) Media are concentrated in the hands of massive corporations who are only concerned with profits. Anything that reduces or threatens those profits is eliminated: Investigative journalism because it's too expensive; government accountability because it pisses off politicians and regulators who dole out billion-dollar policy favors like media "deregulation"; corporate accountability because it angers corporations like the long list that pulled Air America funding. Good journalism can be bad for business.

3) Note the presence of the U.S. Post Office and U.S. Navy on the list of advertisers who have blackballed Air America. It is an outrage that public monies are being deployed to push the ideological agenda of the Bush Administration, or any other administration for that matter. This is one more example of the corruption of governance in Washington, where big money and political power are picking over the bones of democracy.

What's left? Timid, lapdog journalism that fills our TV screens and radio dials. A newspaper market dominated by a handful of massive firms that suffer the same symptoms. Cheap to produce reality shows, celebrity fluff, regurgitated press releases, spin assessing other spin, and entertainment-as-news that titillates but rarely informs.

Obviously we have to stop the corruption in Washington that allows this "business as usual." But there are three specific and crucial areas that demand our attention:

First, we must stop further media consolidation. This episode vividly illustrates the peril of monopoly media power. Bush's man at the Federal Communications Commission is actively moving to lift some of the last remaining ownership limits. The dream scenario for Big Media: eliminate ownership rules so one company can own all the media in a town, and have one newsroom serve all outlets. Heaven for the conglomerate; hell for everyone else. Public backlash stopped a similar move in 2003, and the battle is being fought again at www.stopbigmedia.com.

Second, we must understand that virtually all media - TV, radio, phone - will soon be delivered digitally through the Internet. With increasing speeds, every Web site holds the revolutionary potential to become a TV or radio network, breaking the corporate bottleneck on media access and distribution. But today, cable and phone companies are mounting a full-court press in Washington to privatize the Internet, and make them the gatekeepers to all media - by removing the long-standing principle of "Net Neutrality" on the Internet. Fortunately, public backlash is winning the day (so far), buoyed by the SavetheInternet.com Coalition.

Third, noncommercial media, including PBS, NPR and community broadcasters, must be well funded and insulated from political pressure. The United States has the lowest per capita funding of public broadcasting in the industrialized world. Our dysfunctional system has the president appointing partisan operatives to the board that funds PBS and NPR programs. Once again, the public must be engaged, and the public broadcasting system must be overhauled and reinvigorated.

Critical journalism is bad business for media corporations and their advertisers. It is time to engage the public and demand a media system that will inform and protect America, rather than one that is, in the words of Jon Stewart, "hurting us."

[Peace Patriot]

3. "Good journalism can be bad for business." I strongly disagree with this

premise. Good journalism is bad for monopolies, for the unfair and unjust advantages given to global corporate predators, for criminal business practices, for exploitative practices such as poor wages, for unfair and counterproductive tax burdens on the poor and middle class; good journalism is bad for corporate welfare, bad for corporate price fixing, and bad for stultifying, oppressive accumulations of wealth and power. Good journalism on the other hand is good for competition, real trade, creativity, and entrepreneurship, good for small businesses, good for healthy communities and a healthy society with no great gap between rich and poor, good for cultural variety and richness, good for a healthy democracy, good for good government that is fair to all, good for new political ideas, good for a non-corrupt court system and justice system, good for a non-corrupt regulatory system; good journalism is essential to a free people, and is the fundamental, bottom-line condition for a healthy economy.

Let's get rid of this myth that free speech, access to information, a wide spectrum of political opinion, and all the components of good journalism are "bad for business." It is not true.

Corporations are not businesses. They are megaliths of oppression and killers of a vibrant culture and a healthy economy. They are massive, powerful entities that we have permitted to live forever, accumulating vast properties and wealth, with which to destroy our democracy and our once prosperous and egalitarian economy. They are killing the "golden goose."

I remember when this country had good journalism. And it has never been so prosperous! And as good journalism was slain by corporate monopolies, so, too, was the good life for all Americans slain. And we became slaves to these monstrous, bloodsucking corporations, with no political power in our own country.

Where is manufacturing now? Where is creativity? Where are the jobs? Where is the middle class that could save for their children's college educations--instead of going bankrupt with medical bills? Where are the hopeful poor with aspirations to the middle class? Where is the dream that every generation will have a better life than the previous one? Where is the ingenuity that could get us off fossil fuels? Where are the dreamers and brilliant engineers who sent men to the moon? We once had all these things AND good journalism. The two go together. The ferment of ideas that comes with good journalism PARALLELS and interacts with the well of human creativity that invents products and engages in trade.

The dream of Jeffersonian democracy! Free speech and a vibrant, competitive economy are TWINS, joined at the brain!

What we have now is sick. A sick country--with all the wealth concentrated in these onerous megalopolies. And it will die if it is not revived by good journalism and democratic renewal.

AAR was one of the first signs of health to come along in a long time--and what do these monsters do? They try to kill it!

This has NOTHING to do with business--real business--and everything to do with SICK, TOP HEAVY, AND VERY DESTRUCTIVE POWER!

[Union Thug]

2. I guess freedom really isn't free.